This Day in History
On June 18, 1983, astronaut Sally K. Ride became America’s first woman in space as she and four colleagues blasted off aboard the space shuttle Challenger on a six-day mission.
On this date:
In 1778, American forces entered Philadelphia as the British withdrew during the Revolutionary War.
In 1812, the War of 1812 began as the United States Congress approved, and President James Madison signed, a declaration of war against Britain.
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte met his Waterloo as British and Prussian troops defeated the French in Belgium.
In 1908, William Howard Taft was nominated for president by the Republican National Convention in Chicago.
In 1918, “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1918,” featuring the Irving Berlin song “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” opened on Broadway.
In 1940, during World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged his countrymen to conduct themselves in a manner that would prompt future generations to say, “This was their finest hour.” Charles de Gaulle delivered a speech on the BBC in which he rallied his countrymen after the fall of France to Nazi Germany.
In 1948, Columbia Records publicly unveiled its new long-playing phonograph record in New York.
In 1953, a U.S. Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashed near Tokyo, killing all 129 people on board. Egypt’s 148-year-old Muhammad Ali Dynasty came to an end with the overthrow of the monarchy and the proclamation of a republic.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda spoke to each other by telephone as they inaugurated the first trans-Pacific cable completed by AT&T between Japan and Hawaii.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter and Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev signed the SALT II strategic arms limitation treaty in Vienna.
In 1986, 25 people were killed when a twin-engine plane and helicopter carrying sightseers collided over the Grand Canyon.
In 1996, Richard Allen Davis was convicted in San Jose, California, of the 1993 kidnap-murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma.